Sustainable Hospitality

Challenge
Who are we?
The Sustainable Hospitality Challenge is a
Hotelschool The Hague initiative that aims to
enhance the evolution of sustainable
hospitality. Established as a platform that
challenges innovative hospitality approaches
for the last seven years, SHC has evolved into
a global knowledge-based initiative. Our
mission is to drive innovation to preserve the
sustainability of our world and our industry,
through empowering the next generation to
further push the boundaries of innovation and
to create value-added solutions.

Paul Griep, Director of Industry and Alumni

Relations, founded the Sustainable
Hospitality Challenge in 2014. Having held
key functions in big global corporate hotel
chains, and being an entrepreneur himself
before entering the education field, Paul’s
motivation was to create something with and
for students with a meaningful purpose,
ensuring the that the customer journey, i.e.
the ‘student journey’, remain at the forefront
of the SHC initiative.
SHC addresses the urgency of the climate
crisis and the direct impact on tourism,
architecture and events - an impact that has
engaged all participants to contribute with
innovative solutions.

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The Sustainable Hospitality Challenge
2023 AND BEYOND
Post to an eight-year evolution and following many developments, SHC
continues to grow. The student experience is spreading globally, creating
quite a buzz in the industry.

Looking into the future of the Challenge,

and next year’s 2023 edition, we are
eager to extend our invitation to
participate in this challenge to design,
technology and architecture institutions
as well as Ivy League Universities. As the
concepts have become more complex,
viable, and intricate, and our goal to
ensure that they become a tangible, “The only way to achieve the
existing realisation indisputable, merging
creative hospitality institution concepts common goal of sustainability
with sound architectural input and great
sustainable and innovative design is a
in our industry is if we truly
must. collaborate with each other.
That is exactly what the
Sustainable Hospitality
Challenge entails and as
Hotelschool The Hague we are
very proud that all industry
We currently already have several partners and industry leaders
prestigious Design, Technical and
Architecture Institutions on board from embrace this and have all
Europe and the Middle East, and are
looking to expand that number. These come together to collectively
teams would be working in conjunction with
hospitality teams to create a fully support the teams and this
developed, architecture- and- design
sound, sustainable concept to introduce goal.”
during the challenge. We believe this
collaboration will not only add
sophistication and expertise to the student Paul Griep
proposals, but will also broaden their Founder of SHC, Director of Alumni &
horizons as they work with international Industry Relations Hotelschool The Hague
students from other disciplines from some
of the top schools in their field.

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The Sustainable Hospitality Challenge 2022:
WHAT WAS IT LIKE?
The 2022 edition of the
Sustainable Hospitality
Challenge has been a
great success.

The five finalist student

teams of brilliant young
minds from the world’s
leading hospitality
schools have competed
and presented their
sustainable, innovative
concepts during the 2022
Finals of the Sustainable A Message from the winning team:
Hospitality Challenge at
“We feel so honoured and excited to be here at the finals
the flagship Madinat
representing Cornell University and our hospitality concept.
Jumeirah at the Future
We have made incredible progress with our concept during
Hospitality Summit
our SHC journey, we have worked together with various
organized by The Bench in
coaches, received feedback from industry experts, and got
Dubai, from September
the opportunity to present during this event. We believe it is
19-21, 2022.
great to think about sustainability, but now is the time to put
sustainability into practice.” Devashish Sharma, Eddy
Students presented
concepts under the theme Kohlmann, Eden Brachot and Uddhav Prasad, the winning
‘Remote’, which was team of Cornell University.
inspired by the principal
sponsor NEOM, a region
in northwest Saudi Arabia
being built from the
ground up and a
development that will be a
new model for sustainable
living.

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 The Student Teams and
prestigious Jury Members 2022
Students from over 50 top hospitality
Jury & Coaches Finals 2022
institutions (Cornell University, Swiss
Hotel Management School, Hotel
Management School Montreux,
Hotelschool the Hague were the 2022
finalist teams) have presented their
innovative sustainable concepts to a jury Morgan Tuckness Sandeep Walia Colin Abercrombie
Strategy Director
of Prominent Industry Leaders. Hotel Asset Development
NEOM
COO Middle East,
Marriott International
NEOM Hotel Development

Marloes Knippenberg Marc Descrozaille Jochem-Jan Sleiffer

CEO COO, India, Middle East & President Middle East, Africa &
Kerten Hospitality Africa Turkey,

Accor Hilton

Dimitris Manikis Wolfgang M. Neumann

Tim Cordon
Chairman,
President EMEA Senior Area Vice President
Sustainable Hospitality
WYNDHAM Hotels & Resorts Middle East & Africa,
Alliance

Radisson Hotel Group Founder,

Neumann Hospitality

Coaches

We are also so very pleased to announce Haitham Mattar

that the Sustainable Hospitality Challenge Managing Director, India,
Middle East & Africa,

is now an official partner of the IHG

Sustainable Hospitality Alliance. Oscar Kneppers Peter Cole

Founder,
Founder
Rockstart Eclectic Companies

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The Winning concept 2022: NIMBUS
NIMBUS illustrates the level of ingenuity, sustainability, and out-of-the box thinking
that the Sustainable Hospitality Challenge stands for. The team of Cornell University
envisions bespoke luxurious sustainable experiences without the footprint. NIMBUS is a
luxury hospitality concept comprising of carbon-neutral hotel rooms that soar by way of
hot air balloons, delivering guests to the most remote and spectacular destinations
across NEOM.

As the main prize this year, our sponsor NEOM will fly the winning team to the city of
NEOM. At NEOM the Winning team will meet with the entire hotel development team to
collaborate and bring their NIMBUS concept to life.

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WORDS FROM

THE INDUSTRY
Sandeep Walia
COO Middle East, Marriott International

“This year's presentations were

brilliant, engaging and all teams were
in sync with what they were
presenting. Listening to these fresh
ideas, being in the traditional hotel
industry, make you think out of the
box and what could be done. Some of
these definitely have a realistic angle
to it.”

Colin Abercrombie
Strategy Director, NEOM Hotel Development

“The innovative, sustainable future of

hospitality is being created right here. The
Sustainability Hospitality Challenge offers
a unique setting for students to connect
with their peers and the industry’s leading
figures, with a shared goal of making a
difference that will not only benefit the
sector but hopefully the world as well. It
was a pleasure to be a part of the judging
process, and I look forward to welcoming
the team of Cornell University during their
trip to NEOM and working together to
further develop their winning proposal.”

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 Marloes Knippenberg
CEO, Kerten Hospitality

The young generation’s integration into

our team at all levels is essential to be and
stay relevant. We are proud to be part of a
future-focused global initiative that
connects the young minds with the
industry’s leadership and the investment
community to ensure these ideas become
reality. This year's pitches by the finalists
have proven that we should listen and
collaborate together to allow the
hospitality to continuously evolve like
other industries do.”

Jonathan Worsley
Chairman & Founder, The Bench

“The finals of the Sustainable Hospitality

Challenge were phenomenal and we were
all blown away by the sheer talent of the
students that participated. It’s been a
great pleasure to host the finals of this
important student challenge again this
year, and on behalf of all of us at The
Bench and the Future Hospitality Summit
we would like to congratulate the winning
team from Cornell University. Our
conference theme for FHS is ‘Lead the
Change’ and every single student that
participated in this year’s competition has
demonstrated how they are leading the
change in our industry when it comes to
sustainable travel and hospitality."

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 Get in touch:
Paul Griep
Founder SHC
+31 6 51324647
p.griep@hotelschool.nl

Stella Van Toor

General Manager SHC
+49 176 70058382
s.v.toor@hotelschool.nl

Corporate Website www.thestudentchallenge.com

LinkedIn & Facebook Sustainable Hospitality Challenge

Instagram shc_hospitality

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